Young Hearts
by Hoedogg
Summary: A short story about the progression of Ruthie and Jake's relationship. Epilogue added.
1. Valentine

Disclaimer:  7th Heaven and its characters are not my property, but I have used them in this not-for-profit work of fiction, which is my own creation.

***

PART ONE:  JAKE

I used to think Valentine's Day was such a stupid holiday.  You give a bunch of little pieces of paper with stupid love poems written on them to people you don't really love.  Like everything else in school, it was all just a popularity contest to see who could get the most Valentines and be the biggest stud in the class.

February 14, 2002, started out the same.  Like every year before, I got dozens of valentines from girls in my class, with all kinds of stupid mushy stuff written on them.  "U R the 1 4 Me!"  "I want 2 B with U!"  So lame.  I didn't want to be with any of the girls who gave me those stupid cards.

I wasn't expecting things to change as suddenly as they did.  It was all my sister's fault.  She was the one who called me that day, begging me to meet someone new.

"Come on, Jakey.  It would be a huge favor for me.  Pleeease!"

"No, Maria.  I don't want to go to any stupid Valentine's Day party.  I don't even know this Ruthie girl.  And besides, I don't even like girls."

"Well, it's not like it will be just you and Ruthie.  There will be guys there too, you know?  There'll be a bunch of kids from your sixth grade class.  You should really go and work on your social skills, because frankly they're kind of lacking."

"Shut up."

"See what I mean?"

"I'm not going to any stupid party."

"Jakey," she pleaded, "please, do it for me."  
"No."

"I promise, if you go to this party with Ruthie, I'll do your chores for a week.  And I'll pay you five bucks."

"Twenty."

"Ten."

"Deal."

I guess Maria was really trying to impress her boyfriend, Simon Camden, who she had, like, just met.  His little sister didn't have a date to this sixth-grade girl Kim's Valentine's Day party, so Maria just volunteered me without even asking me first.  Stupid Valentine's Day.  It makes people do all kinds of stupid things.

So I waited at home for her to come pick me up, and she acted like such a dork when she got there.  "Jake, you have _got to put on a nicer shirt than that!  And then I'll fix your hair."_

She was making me feel like a pet show pony or something.  But I just kept thinking about the ten dollars, and the week free of chores.  It made everything more bearable.  After way too much thread selection and grooming, she decided I finally looked "presentable" and we hopped in her car to roll to the party.  Along the way, she kept trying to coach me.

"Jakey, be nice to Ruthie tonight, OK?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"Well, on the phone you gave me an attitude about going to the party with her.  I don't want you to be rude just because you don't want to be there with her."

"I won't be rude, Maria.  I promise."

"Good.  Now, what are you going to talk about with her?"

"I don't know.  Why do you care?"

"Because, Jake, I don't want you to embarrass me.  If you say something to her about me, then it could get back to Simon and I don't want to ruin my chances with him, OK?"

"Whatever.  I won't talk about you."

"Oh!  I have an idea!  Why don't you ask her to dance?"

"What?  I'm not going to dance with her."

"Oh come on, it would be much easier to dance with her than to keep trying to come up with conversation."

She had a point, but I figured that I could milk her for some more cash by pretending that I didn't want to dance.  Eventually I got ten more bucks out of her, and she got my pledge that when I arrived at the party I would ask Ruthie to dance.

Now, I had never really met Ruthie Camden before.  I mean, we went to the same school and everything, but I hardly ever saw her.  She wasn't in any of my classes, and she was always kind of…what's the word…aloof from everyone.  But I knew what she looked like, and who she was.  She was that curly-haired girl whose hair seemed to get straighter every year, who looked and acted older than she really was, the daughter of that preacher guy from the huge family that everyone in Glenoak seemed to know one way or another.

When Maria and I arrived at the party I saw Ruthie standing with her brother.  Whatever.  I really couldn't have cared less about hanging out with her at the stupid party until Kim and Frank started making fun of her for bringing Simon as her date.  Ruthie looked so vulnerable and embarrassed; something snapped inside me.  I don't know exactly what it was, but suddenly I hated Kim and I wanted to show her up at her own party.  That's when I found myself asking Ruthie if she wanted to dance, not because Maria was paying me twenty dollars but because I wanted to do it.  Kim stood in our way, telling us there was no dancing at her party.  But I didn't care.  Before I knew it, Ruthie and I were dancing together, and Simon and Maria were dancing, and then everyone else was dancing.

Suddenly, Valentine's Day meant something.


	2. Time and Distance

Sixth grade is strange.  One weekend the boys and girls will be at a party wanting to play stupid kissing games like Spin-the-Bottle.  The very next Monday those same boys won't let the girls join their soccer game at recess because, "Girls aren't any good at playing soccer."  And they won't take the time to talk to the girls about anything because they're too busy arguing with each other about whether or not the Angels are going to make the playoffs this year.  It doesn't make much sense.

I guess that's kind of what happened with Ruthie and me after that party.  Kind of, but not quite.  It's not like I purposely tried to avoid her, more like I couldn't find the right words to say to her.  We went for most of the rest of the school year not saying much to each other in the halls.  We would see each other, and we would exchange looks, or smiles, but usually not words.  Just looks and smiles, although my heart wanted so much more than that.

It feels weird for me to say that.  I had never really wanted something in my heart before.  You know, I had wanted stuff before, like a GameCube or a Tony Hawk skateboard, but I just wanted those things, like, in my brain or someplace like that.  It wasn't something I felt in my heart.  But with Ruthie I knew, after that day I danced with her, I knew I just…felt different.  Like something hurt inside me because I wanted to be with her but she didn't seem to want to speak to me anymore, but I kept holding onto that feeling in my heart that maybe someday she would talk to me again or maybe I would find the right words to say to her and then we could be together.

And so I never took the twenty dollars from Maria for dancing with Ruthie because I didn't want to spoil the way I felt about her.  So stupid.

***

Summer arrived, and I played a lot of Little League and went swimming and surfing with my friends.  I barely thought about Ruthie at all, except sometimes when I was alone in my bed at night.  Thinking about her made it hard to sleep.  It made me feel even more alone just knowing she was out there, with her silky straight hair and her perfect shiny lips, out there and probably not thinking of me at all.  I was just some boy she had used at a party to make herself look better in front of another girl.

"Jakey, be nice to Ruthie tonight, OK?"  That's what Maria had asked me to do on the way to that party.  I guess Simon hadn't bothered to tell Ruthie the same thing.  She stole my heart.  That wasn't very nice.

***

I got a surprise toward the end of the summer when she called me.  It was so unexpected; I couldn't believe it was her at first.

"Ruthie Camden?"

"Yeah, it's me.  How's your summer?"

"Great, except it's almost over.  How's yours?"

"Boring.  Until now."

My heart pounded.  What did she mean by that?  "Oh?  What's up, Ruthie?"

"Well, it would be a huge favor for me if you could come over to my house.  I need your help with a plan I have.  See, I'm trying to convince my father he needs to let me do something."

I tried not to let my voice crack over my excitement at the idea of going over to her house.  "Sure.  What do you need me to do?"

"I'll explain it all when you get here."

"Um, OK.  I'll get Maria to drive me over."

Maria was more than happy to escort me to the Camdens' house.  She was hoping she might catch Simon and talk to him, because she never could understand why he never called her back or talked to her again after that Valentine's date they had.  I didn't know what to tell her.  Guys can be weird like that sometimes, for any number of reasons.

Ruthie acted weird too when she answered the door.  She sneaked me into the living room and there was a freaking monkey sitting on the couch.  Or a chimpanzee or something like that.  It was her neighbor's from across the street, and she was just taking care of it.  Whatever.  And she was all like, "You've gotta pretend you're my boyfriend."

Pretend to be her boyfriend?  I could live with that.  So what if there was a chimp sitting on her couch?

She led me over and we sat next to the chimp, and then Ruthie's father came into the living room.  He just sat down across from us and started staring at us.  Everything was so weird.  Still, it was easy for me to "pretend" I was Ruthie's boyfriend, considering all the time I had spent fantasizing about it.

Mrs. Camden came in after a few minutes and asked for Reverend Camden's help in the kitchen.  That's when Ruthie told me to put my arm around her.  I found myself hoping deep down that, even though Ruthie had said this was just "pretend", maybe she really did want to be with me.  After all, she could have called any other boy to be her "pretend" boyfriend, right?  But she chose me.

Reverend Camden returned from the kitchen and before I could pull my arm away from Ruthie, she started kissing me.  She kissed me!  I thought I was having an attack, my heart was racing so fast.

Her father yelled at us to break it up though.  Somehow he knew she was scheming, and once he had figured it out she asked me to leave.  I guess she had been pretending I was her boyfriend so that her father wouldn't think that her having a pet would be so bad.  Kind of like a bait-and-switch.

I lay awake in bed those last few nights of summer before school started, wishing Ruthie thought of me as more than just bait.


	3. The Junior High Crush

Junior high is strange.  It's a lot like sixth grade, except the kids are meaner.  Instead of trying to make themselves sound cooler by bragging the way they used to do in elementary school, they usually just try to put other people down by gossiping about them.  I guess it's a lot easier to make people believe gossip than it is to impress them with bragging.  I didn't really understand these things at first.

It sucked because there were so many new kids in my classes whom I didn't know, and I also didn't know the proper junior-high way to answer all their questions.  In geography class one day a boy asked me, with cruelty in his eyes and sarcasm in his voice, "Hey feathered-hair kid, you got a girlfriend?" I knew the answer he was looking for.  He wanted it to be "No" so he could put me down and look big in front of his snickering friends.

"Sure I do," I answered, hoping they would just leave me alone.  Of course, I left out the part where she was really just a pretend girlfriend.

"So you got a girl, huh?  Right.  How far have you gotten with her?"

Not a question I felt comfortable answering, since it really wasn't these other kids' business.  But you can't dodge it because then you get laughed at and put down.  "First base," I answered, because it was kind of true and not really bragging.

Seventh grade boys are like wolves; they can smell bragging a mile away.  I know this now.  But then, to throw them off my scent and shut them up, I started talking about Ruthie.  You know, I just told them stuff I never thought they would care about in a million years, hoping to bore them into picking on someone else.  Unfortunately, I said a little too much.  That's when things went terribly wrong.

"Her name is Ruthie.  She likes riding horses and slow-dancing.  Oh, and she likes taking care of her neighbor's chimpanzee."

"Her neighbor's what?!"

Uh-oh.  "Nothing," I tried to backtrack.

"No, what did you just say, kid?"

"I said she likes taking care of her neighbor's…um, see, this guy who lives across the street from her works at a zoo, and he like, keeps these chimpanzees at his house…"

"No way.  You're making this up."

"No!  I'm serious!  He let her take care of the boy chimpanzee one day.  His name was Eisenhower.  I went over to her house and we all sat on the couch together."

The other boys laughed uncontrollably until the ringleader spoke up again.  "Oh my gosh, that is like the funniest thing I've ever heard.  Your girlfriend is…a monkey lover!"  More uncontrollable laughter.

I had tried to be cool, to keep the wolves at bay, and I had failed miserably.  And I had accidentally taken Ruthie down in the process.  My heart sank.  If she found out I had blabbed about Eisenhower, would she ever want to be my pretend girlfriend again?

***

Seventh grade girls can be just as cruel as the boys.  I mean, that sixth-grade girl Kim had been pretty mean to Ruthie at the Valentine's party earlier in the year, but Kim was nothing compared to a girl who insulted Ruthie in the hall that afternoon.

"Look, there goes Monkey Lover!" she shouted to her friends.  "Hey Monkey Lover!  Where's your monkey?"

Great.  Somehow, the story I had let slip in geography class had made it all the way around the school.  I watched the ugly scene unfold from my locker down the hall, hoping Ruthie wouldn't be mad at me for telling everyone about Eisenhower.

Amazingly, she didn't get mad at all.  She stayed so cool.  She just turned around with this tough look in her eye and said, "Did you just call me a monkey lover?"

"If the name fits…" said the mean girl.

That's when I decided I had heard enough.  I stepped over to the girls and said, "Don't pay her any attention, Ruthie!"  So lame.  I should have said something mean to the girl in return.  Like I could have told her that _she_ looked like a monkey.  It would have embarrassed her in front of her friends and shut her up for sure.  But I wasn't thinking fast enough.

So then I said the next lame thing that popped into my mind.  I tried to make it clear that _I_ was Ruthie's boyfriend, not the monkey.  None of the mean girl's group looked convinced.  So I added lamely, "If you don't stop making fun of her she's going to punch you."

"You going to punch me, Monkey Lover?" the mean girl taunted Ruthie.

Ruthie still kept her cool though.  She simply said, "I don't think you're worth punching," and walked away.

She was like a new person.  I mean, last year she had looked so scared and vulnerable when Kim was making fun of her, but the new seventh-grade Ruthie just let everyone's cruel words bounce off her like they didn't even matter.  After that moment I knew I was truly in love with her.  I also knew that I had blown any chance with her after my stupid attempts to defend her.  After all, she was so cool.  Why would she want a chump like me?


	4. Verging On Obsession

I thought for sure that Ruthie would hate me after that incident in the hallway.  I couldn't eat dinner that evening because I lost my appetite thinking about what a dork I was.  After all, it was my fault that she was given such an unflattering nickname as "Monkey Lover".  That night I couldn't fall asleep because I kept thinking about how much she was going to hate me for doing that to her.  Then I woke up the next morning with my stomach in knots because I was so worried about seeing her in school.

But an amazing thing happened.  She didn't seem to care.  For days afterward people still called her "Monkey Lover," but she just ignored them.

She didn't ignore _me_ though.  We started waving and smiling at each other whenever we passed in the school halls, the way we had done back in the sixth grade.  Only more romantic this time, I think.

It was so amazing.  I knew a lame-o blabbermouth like me didn't deserve her attention, but for whatever reason she really seemed to like me.  Could it be that I had actually impressed Ruthie when I stood up to the mean girl?  I mean, I had thought I was being so lame at the time.  But Ruthie hadn't paid me much attention before then, and now she was waving and smiling at me at least three times a day.

Every time she smiled, my feelings drove me crazy.  I wanted her so badly; I knew I had to make my move.  So I took a deep breath and walked up to her at her locker one day and gave her my phone number.  She smiled, took a notebook and pen out of her backpack, wrote down hers, and gave it to me.

Confirmation, she liked me too.  My heart felt like it was leaping out of my chest.  I knew I was the luckiest kid on earth.

***

We talked on the phone a few times over the next couple weeks.  I could have spent hours talking to her.  Everything she said was so fascinating.  Like, one day she told me about how her father was really sick and had to go to the hospital for heart surgery, and she was so mad at him because he had lied to her about being sick before he went.  It was amazing; the first deep conversation I had ever had with a girl.  Except I didn't really do any of the talking, but that was okay.  Instead I just listened.  Girlfriends like that, I think.

The more we talked, the more I got into her.  It was like, every time we talked she stole another little piece of my heart that I knew I would never get back unless I saw her.  I just wanted to touch her and hold her so badly, and maybe even kiss her again, because if I did then maybe I could get my heart back from her.

God that sounded so lame.  What was this girl doing to me?

***

Like I said before, junior high is strange.  Out of the blue, the mean girl who called Ruthie "Monkey Lover" approached me in school one day and asked me to go to a party with her.  I was like, "Huh?"  I mean, had I not made an ass of myself in front of her when I was trying to stick up for Ruthie?

At first I thought maybe she was trying to play a mean prank on me the way Kim and her boyfriend had done to Ruthie.  Then I thought maybe she still hated Ruthie and was just trying to steal me away from her or something.  Or maybe she just liked me.  I don't know.  Apparently, I know nothing about what girls are thinking.  Anyway, I told her I was "Kind of seeing someone."

She was like, "So what?  It's not like you're married or something."

I really didn't want to do anything to mess up my chances with Ruthie, but I didn't want to make this girl mad either.  If she had gone around telling the rest of the school Ruthie was a monkey lover, there was no predicting what she would tell everyone about me if I turned her down.  So I just said, "Um, I'll think about it," and walked away as fast as my legs could carry me.

***

That same afternoon I heard on the junior high grapevine that Ruthie might like this new kid, Petey, who had moved in right down the street from her.  I could feel my blood begin to boil as soon as I heard those words.  That's when I knew it was time to step up my efforts to make Ruthie mine.

My insides were twisting.  I knew I loved Ruthie with all my heart, but I didn't know how to turn the other girl down.  Still, I couldn't hesitate, or this Petey kid might step in and steal Ruthie away from me.  So I did what Ruthie would have done.  I came up with a plan.

***

After school that day I called Ruthie and tried to convince her to let me come over and see her.  My plan was to tell her, face to face, that I wanted to be with her and no one else.  You know, to be exclusive.  But Ruthie said her friend Yasmin was there and they were busy.  Then she hung up on me.

I started freaking out.  I mean, I started hyperventilating and my palms got sweaty and my stomach felt like it was in a blender.  I knew I had to see her right away.  I couldn't take no for an answer.

So I washed my face and drank a cup of water to calm down.  Then I asked Maria if she would take me over to the Camdens' house.  Again she agreed because she hoped she might see Simon.  I didn't bother to tell her to just give up on him already, because I really needed the ride.

***

Yasmin answered the door but when Ruthie found out it was me she stepped into the hallway to greet me.  And when I finally saw her she looked…oh my God.  She looked incredible.  She had all this makeup on and her hair was up and she just looked so…I don't know…mature and beautiful.  Absolutely gorgeous.  Words cannot do justice to the way she looked.

I couldn't help but blurt out, "Wow!  You look like you're eighteen or something!"  Fortunately, she took it as a compliment.

Yasmin left – I had forgotten she was even there – and then Ruthie tried to get me to leave too because she was babysitting her little brothers.  I lied though and told her my sister wouldn't be back to pick me up for another half hour.  Then I did it.  I took a deep breath and let all those words that had been spinning around in my gut finally come up.  I told her I wanted us to be exclusive.

She kind of brushed me off by saying that she wasn't really seeing anyone else, so it didn't matter.  But then I told her about the mean girl – I realized I didn't even know her name – asking me to go to the party with her.  I told Ruthie that if the two of us weren't exclusive, then I really didn't have any reason to turn the girl down.

I looked in her eyes, but I couldn't tell if she was buying it or not.  She didn't answer or give me a sign either.  Instead she just led me into the living room, where we had made out on the couch once before.  Then she turned on the radio to some slow song station and started to dance with me.

Wow.  It was like our relationship was coming full-circle, back to the time we had first met dancing at the Valentine's party.  It was so romantic!  And finally, I was touching her again, smelling her, moving with her, seeing her close up, her beautiful hair and eyes and skin.  I knew right then that being exclusive with her was not a mistake.  I knew that I loved everything about her!

The dance came to a crashing halt when her mom arrived at the house and caught us.  Boy was she unhappy!  But Ruthie explained to her that we were dancing to seal the deal on our exclusivity agreement.  Yes!  She was mine!

Of course, I had to leave right then before her Mom blew a gasket.  But that afternoon I left the Camden house the happiest boy in the world.  Finally, my deepest wish had come true.  Only it was better:  Ruthie hadn't simply given me my heart back.  She had given me her own instead.

END PART ONE


	5. Exclusivity Is a Temporary Thing

PART TWO:  RUTHIE

Jake Davis is a strange little boy.

He just came over to my house asking me to be "exclusive" with him.  I didn't know how to answer at first, so I led him into the living room and started dancing with him.  That bought me some time to think.

At first, my attitude was, "Exclusive?  Forget that!"  After all, my sisters are in their twenties, and they're still cycling through boyfriends like the twins cycle through Pull-Ups.  And plus I'm only twelve.  I shouldn't be tying myself down to just one guy!

But then I considered that Jake came through for me on a number of occasions.  He volunteered to be my date for a Valentine's party when no one else wanted to be with me.  Then he volunteered to be my date again when I was trying to con Dad into letting me have a pet.  However, that didn't work, so I'm not sure Jake should get any credit for it.  But then he also kind of stuck up for me at school when this baboon-butt-faced girl was calling me a "Monkey Lover".

What the heck?  I'll keep Jake around as long as he's useful, or until I get bored with him.  Then I'll move on to Petey.

It's nice to have options.

END PART TWO


	6. Transition

AUTHOR'S NOTE:  I decided to add this epilogue based on the events in the episode "A Cry for Help".

***

EPILOGUE

Ruthie Camden had been the first girl ever to steal my heart.  She was the first girl I danced with, the first one I talked to on the phone, and the first one I ever kissed.  And when we agreed to see each other exclusively that afternoon, I thought maybe she would be the last.  I realize now how silly that idea was.

Fortunately, she didn't have to break my heart in order for me to figure that out.  Oh sure, when I left her house that afternoon, that's what I thought it would have taken.  At that point in time, Ruthie would have had to tear my heart out, stomp on it, and then laugh in my face about it in order for me to ever want to spend time with another girl.  But in the end, my motivation to move on turned out to be much simpler than that.  All I had to do was spend a little more time around her to realize that she wasn't the girl for me.

And that's exactly what I did over the next two weeks.  Her parents put her "on restriction" – which I guess is something like being grounded – for dancing with me while she was supposed to be watching the twins.  I felt terrible, since it was kind of my fault that her parents were punishing her.  After all, if I hadn't gone over to see her, she never would have gotten in trouble.

So I decided I would make it up to her.  I figured that she would get bored being stuck at home all that time, unable to go out and have fun, so I called her every day to talk to her and lift her spirits.  But after a while the phone calls started to drag, and Ruthie became ruder every time I called.  She never even said goodbye when she hung up.  And by the end of the first week, instead of her usual, "Hey, Jake!" she answered the phone with an, "Oh, it's you again," like she was disappointed to hear from me.

"What's wrong, Ruthie?  Do you not want to talk to me or something?"

"No, it's fine," she said in a mopey voice.  "We'll talk."

But for the first time, I found myself not really wanting to talk to her anymore.

***

It wasn't just Ruthie's phone attitude that made me stop liking her.  I thought it would be nice to switch my gym class with my lunch period so that she and I could sit together at lunch, but she acted like I was invading her privacy or something.  And then, whenever we went through the lunch line, she was rude to the lunch servers, acting like they were beneath her.

One day she was like, "Ewww, what are those?"

"They're green beans," the lunch lady answered politely.

"They look like slimy worms with boogers on them.  How long did you overcook them?" Ruthie snapped at her.

"If you don't want any, you don't have to get any," the lunch lady told her.

"Are you kidding?" Ruthie smart-mouthed.  "I would never eat _any_ of the garbage you people serve.  My mom packs my lunch every day."  Then she turned to me and sniffed, "Honestly, Jake.  I don't know how you can stand to eat this stuff."

I held my tongue and didn't say what I really wanted to say to her then.

***

Even though I was starting to realize that Ruthie was not the nicest person in the world, I still tried to be nice to her because, like I said before, I felt guilty about getting her in trouble.  So I kept offering to do favors for her:  carry her backpack, her books, even her gum.

Yeah, I know it's gross.  But she was chewing a piece of gum that Petey had given her in the hall one day, and we were about to pass Mr. Callahan's room.  Everyone knows that if Mr. Callahan catches you chewing gum in school, he automatically gives you detention.  So I held out my hand and told her to spit her gum into it.  I would have held it for her and then given it back to her when we had passed his room.

"Ew, Jake, that is so gross!  You are a gross, gross boy!" she said disgustedly before she spat her gum into a hallway trash can.

It's not like I couldn't have washed my hands before the next class.  I was only trying to be nice.

***

By the end of her two-week restriction, Ruthie had become so continually rude to me that I could barely stand to be around her anymore.  But I still gave her the benefit of the doubt and tried to convince myself that she was just in a bad mood because of the restriction.  I tried to talk myself into believing that once the restriction was over, things would go back to the way they had been before.  We would be romantic again, we would come up with fun little plots and schemes the way we used to do, and she would open up to me and talk about important stuff again like she had done with her father's heart surgery.

So I managed to work up at least a little bit of false enthusiasm the day she came off restriction.  It was a Friday, and after school I asked my Mom if I could visit Ruthie and stay late.  She said I could stay as late as I wanted, and she gave me a ride over to the Camden house.

Just like when I had danced with Ruthie that day two weeks ago, I felt butterflies as I walked up to the front door.  They weren't fluttering nearly as much as they had back then, though.

"What are _you_ doing here?" Ruthie asked as soon as she opened the door.  Not the greeting I was hoping for.

"Today's the day!" I shouted happily.

She looked at me like she didn't know what I was talking about.  I reminded her that she came off restriction today, and then I told her I wished I could have done the time for her.  That was a pretty romantic thing to say, right?  But she just looked at me like she was disgusted.  Then I told her I thought it was great that we could hang out all the time now, and that I could stay for dinner.

"Ha ha, that _is_ great," she responded with no enthusiasm whatsoever.

And that was the exact moment when I knew that we were going to break up, because for the first time I finally _wanted_ to break up.  I wanted to leave right then and run as far away as I possibly could and never speak to her again.  But I had never broken up with anyone before, and I didn't know what to say to her to end everything.

Obviously she didn't want to talk to me either, because she told me she had to go get the twins, and that we were going to play Candyland.  I think I stopped playing that game when I, like, graduated kindergarten, but I just said, "Um, OK."  Whatever.

I sat down in her kitchen trying to think of how to break up with her, but nothing came to me.  A few moments later she walked back into the kitchen with the twins.  I still couldn't come up with a thing to say, so I repeated that my Mom had said I could stay as late as I wanted.  She ignored that comment and told me to take her little brothers into the living room and set up the Candyland board, so I did.

When I went back to the kitchen to let her know the game was ready, I saw that she had been talking to her Mom.  And then came the moment when all the distance that had grown between us over the past two weeks finally caused us to lose each other.  Ruthie just came right out and, blunt as ever, told me she didn't like me, didn't want to have lunch with me, or for me to carry her books, or to spend any time with me ever.

I would be lying if I said it didn't hurt.  Nobody wants to hear that about himself, even from a person he doesn't like.  Still, it was exactly what I had wanted to say to her but hadn't had the guts.  So I just said, "That's cool!"  Then I set myself up a ride home with her hot older sister.  After all, I wanted to move on fast, unlike stupid Maria who was still whining about Simon never calling her back.

As she walked me down the hall to leave, Ruthie thanked me for not crying when she dumped me.  Yeah, right!  As if I would cry over her!  What a bonehead thing to say.  I was nice about it though.  All I said was:  "We're twelve.  It's not like we're getting married."  But I decided it would be better not to say the other thing I was thinking at the time:  "Thank God!"

THE END


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